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Rapping Reader

Description

Rapping Reader is an interactive multimedia computer application designed to improve children’s reading ability. Rapping Reader uses the child’s familiarity and fascination with music by giving the child the task of writing songs for of his/her favorite musical group or artist. The child’s first assignment is to serve as the artist’s or group‘s junior writer. In this role, the child is placed in charge of a hit song and is given tasks (find the missing words, unscrambling the song’s words, writing the correct word in a phrase) that require him/her to use their knowledge of the song's lyrics to read and manipulate the lyrics of the song. After the child has demonstrated his ability to read the words of the song, he is promoted to head writer. As head writer, the child has two task. The child must use his creativity to write a parody. Second, the child can audition to become a rapper for the studio. To audition, the child has to create a music video. The child creates pictures to illustrate his rap and then the child writes his own lyrics. Finally, the child records his lyrics. The final product is a synchronized video of the child's written lyrics, sung lyrics, and illustrations.

 

Rational for Design of Rapping Reader

Rapping Reader, the initial system, was designed for a target audience of African American boys who have experienced difficulty learning to reading. As stated earlier, a child’s motivation and background knowledge are key determinants of how successful a child will be in learning to read. Thus, I wanted to build an environment to test whether culturally relevant reading material and motivating tasks could help improve the African American boy’s reading skills. The objective was to link reading to an activity with which the students were familiar and enjoyed, rapping. To this end, I decided to use rap lyrics as reading material since African American boys are the group most associated with rap music. In addition, I situated the environment in a fictitious record studio since this is a location where many of the target audience would like to work. I hypothesized that a learning environment that uses rap lyrics as reading material would create:

    1. A positive effect on a student’s perception of the importance of learning to read.
    2. A positive improvement in a student’s sight vocabulary.
    3. A positive improvement in their motivation to read.

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For more information about the philosophy or products offered by MEDAL,
please contact Nichole Pinkard at:
University of Michigan
School of Education, Room 1228E
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
313-936-0925

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Last modified: March 11, 1998